Spontini, the Napoleon of opera, is back

PARIS. It is to be feared that for many Milanese Spontini is only the name of a famous pizzeria, and for the rest of the Italians an illustrious unknown. For the French, if anything, the name evokes that of a chain of clothing stores. Yet, Gaspare Spontini da Maiolati, in the Marche region (1774-1851), was one of the most important operas of the nineteenth century and, with Cherubini, perhaps the most authentically Italian-French, in the sense that, after the usual apprenticeship in the Italy of melodrama , the celebrity arrived in Paris as a French opera player, favorite musician of the Empress Josephine (her husband Napoleon instead preferred the Italian opera) and the very symbol of the “Empire style” in music, a kind of David of the tragédie lyrique. Then we can discuss whether “La vestale” (1807) is actually his masterpiece as per Bignami’s history of the work: certainly, few works like this summarize the characters of an entire era, and every time (few) that you listen to it live you regret that you can’t do it more often.
Of course, the problem is also “how” to do “The Vestal”. In 1993 Riccardo Muti even opened the Scala season to us: but, between the impossible company and the old yet new show of Cavani, to relaunch Spontini it was a missed opportunity. Now try the legendary Palazzetto Bru Zane, a well-deserving Paris-Venetian center of studies and research on French music, which with the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées proposed a performance there in the form of a concert that will also become a record. Naturally, conceived with contemporary criteria, therefore ancient in the choice of entrusting it to Talents Lyriques, a “baroque” complex, and to their director Christophe Rousset. The result seems excellent: not only is the sound “period”, but the neoclassical solemnity that we usually associate with Spontini (also giving him that inevitable but undeserved aura of boredom, albeit sublime) becomes much more jagged, sharp and, in the end , expressive. What is lost in monumental marble is largely compensated for by a less smooth but certainly more engaging drama. And such a richness of color explains why Spontini’s number one fan was Berlioz. I would add that, if the orchestra is excellent (only the horns undergo Spontinian writing from time to time), the very busy Vlaams Radiokoor, the Flemish Radio Choir, is excellent. Too bad only for the cut of the ballets, which are like the icing on the cake to this repertoire: without it, the cake is good all the same, but it looks worse.
Of course, just as to make roast chicken you first need a chicken, so to make “the vestal” you first need a great prima donna, exactly what La Scala was missing on the occasion mentioned. Marina Rebeka is now one of the four or five best sopranos in the world and in fact sings everything splendidly, among other things in excellent French: the fearsome progression of the second act, grande aria, duet and trio, sees her fearless and triumphant. If she has a limit, it is precisely her bel canto formation that leads her to phrasing starting from the melody and not from the word. In any case, she is very good. She is held up with animosity by the Great Vestal of Aude Extrémo, who on the contrary she is not afraid of “dirtying” the sounds a little when necessary. The Grand Pontife (here everything is grand) by Nicolas Courjal is very authoritative. The two tenors are actually a tenor and a baritone, the latter, Cinna, an impeccable Tassis Christoyannis. Like Licinius, Stanislas de Barbeyrac does everything he has to, but in the end the least compelling pages of the work are his own. Spontini’s fault, however. Full theater (dream, or am I awake? In Italy there would have been more people on stage than in the hall) and very warm.